Four Days with Hemingway's Ghost (8 page)

Minutes after Joe left the
bar,
Humberto
Salazar came back over and offered us a ride to the
Finca
Vigia
.  Being it was five o’clock and the end of his shift,
Humberto
said he’d be honored to drive us to the hilltop estate Ernest had called home for twenty years.  Glad not to have to take a cab, we filed out of the restaurant and hoofed it three blocks to where the car was parked.  The narrow streets were lined by tenements and filled with playing children.  Little girls jumped rope, and barefoot boys screamed and yelled as they cooled off in the rushing water of an open fire hydrant.  As we made our way down a sidewalk, the smell of hot Cuban food wafted from open windows along with the lyrics of Creolized Caribbean music.   

“Look, Senor Ernest,”
Humberto
said, pointing to a two-toned orange and beige car parked up ahead.  “It is a surprise.”

“Get out of here!” Ernest came back. “It can’t be!”

“Oh, but it is.”

Wedged between two other cars alongside the curb was a 1955 Chrysler New Yorker Deluxe convertible.

“Well I’ll be!  My old car!  I used to shuttle my son
Gigi’s
entire baseball team in this.”

With the top down, the upholstery looked every bit as new as the body Ernest was by now caressing. 

“Son of a gun,” he said. “It’s been restored.”

“Yes,”
Humberto
said before taking one last drag from his filtered cigarette and flicking it into the gutter. “I would let you drive it home, but I fear we might be stopped by the police.”

“Can you imagine that,” Ernest said, “a driverless car in the streets of
Havana.
  That would put the Headless Horseman to shame.”  Then he looked at me. 

“Couldn’t you just see the look on our taxi
driver’s
face if he saw that one, Jack?”

We had a good chuckle while
Humberto
side-stepped between two close bumpers to get to the driver’s side.  “Come,” he said, “we should get going. 
It
ees
a thirty-minute drive.”

I opened the passenger door to get into the back seat, but Ernest stopped me.

“I’ll sit back there,” he said, resting a heavy hand on my shoulder.  “That might look somewhat odd too . . . you in the back and
Humberto
up front.”

Light as the Havana traffic was, before we knew it we were out of the city.  It was still warm, but when we picked up speed in the countryside, the breeze rushing into the open car refreshed us all.  Nobody said much, but I turned back toward Ernest twice and saw he was taking everything in.  Seeing he was in a pensive mood, I left him alone to reminisce. 

As we closed in on Ernest’s old estate surrounded now by lush, tropical greenery, I looked for a tall hill.  I knew that
Finca
Vigia
was Spanish for Lookout Farm and that it sat atop a hill.  But before I could see the house,
Humberto
slowed the Chrysler to a stop on the country road.  He shifted the transmission into park then turned to look at Ernest in back.

“As you know, Senor Hemingway, the entrance is but another mile from here.  Come . . . why don’t you drive your car the rest of the way?  It is very quiet here.  I do not think anyone will see you.”

“Sure.  What the hell.” 

I got out and opened the door for Ernest, and he pulled his stiff body out of the car.  Then
Humberto
climbed out, and Ernest slid behind the wheel.  Our Cuban friend closed the door and said, “I will be leaving you gentlemen now.”  Then he shook our hands.

“It’s a long walk back,
Humberto
,” I said, winking at him as if I were now an insider.

“Oh, I will make it.”

He gave the door a gentle pat then started walking back toward Havana.  We turned and watched him for a moment.  He was something else.  All spruced up in his red jacket and fine black trousers, he strolled down that long country road as if he didn’t have a care in the world.  When Ernest pulled away, I looked back at him one more time. 
Humberto
Salazar was nowhere to be seen.  I let out a sigh, and Ernest glanced in the rearview mirror and only smiled.

A hundred yards later we rounded a curve, and Ernest said, “Now
this
is going to be interesting, Jacky boy.”

Up ahead, on the driver’s side of the road, an old man ambled along with four goats.         

“Watch his eyes,” Ernest said as he slowed the car down.

When we got close enough so that the old timer could hear us coming, which was just before we passed him, he stopped and turned our way.

Fighting back the laughter by now and with a goofy smile on my face, I gave him a little wave. 

His eyes were disinterested.  They followed us as we went by, but that was it.  He acted as if he’d seen a hundred driverless cars on that quiet road every day. 

When we passed him, Ernest and I both popped a gut.  Like two wild and crazy teenagers in daddy’s convertible, we roared and chortled as we bounced in our seats.  Finally, after half-pulling ourselves together, Ernest said, “Talk about being world weary,” and we lost it all over again.  Life, or whatever state of existence I was in, was good.

About the time we regained our composure again, Ernest stomped the brake pedal.

“I don’t believe I almost missed it,” he said, turning the wheel hard right and pulling into a break in the trees.  As we rolled to a stop, he said, “There we go.  Jump out and open the gate.”

It was a wide metal gate like you’d expect to see at a ranch’s entrance.  There was a shield mounted on the middle with the letters FV emblazoned on it.  Behind that, a narrow sandy road cut through a pine forest.  I couldn’t yet see the house or any outbuildings.  As we idled slowly ahead, I could tell Ernest’s anxiety was building.  There was tension in the air just as there had been when we’d walked up to the front door of his Key West home.  Apprehension was smeared all over his face.  He looked like he was pushing the car rather than driving it.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

He turned to me, giving me a slow wink that said, “Thank you, and yes, I’m alright.”   We then rounded a bend.  He looked a little stronger, and he said, “There she is . . . to the left up there.  All cleaned up, sitting proud beneath her protective shelter.”

It was the
Pilar
.  Seeing the boat there on a concrete pad surrounded by tall swaying bamboo did not surprise me in the least.  Not much would at this point.

“The swimming pool is in the trees there as well,”
Hem
said. “I buried some of my
pets
right near it.  Hell, I even had gravestones made for them.”  After seemingly reflecting back in time for a moment he added, “See the tower over there?  Mary had it built so I could write in it.  But I couldn’t work in there.  Eventually the cats took it over.”

“This sure is one beautiful place.”

“Yes it is.  At first I thought I wouldn’t like it, you know, being so far from town.  But we had many good times here.  Hey, there it is.  There’s the house!”

Tinted pink by the setting tropical sun, the stone building was magnificent.  Edged on the sides by palm trees, the place resembled a single-story fortress with a second floor on just one end.  Stone steps almost as wide as the horizon led up to a huge front patio.  Sitting atop the high wooded grounds like it had since 1886, the
Finca
Vigia
looked every bit the paradisiacal writer’s home it had once been. 

Ernest said nothing.  He parked the car, and we walked to and up the steps to the spacious courtyard.  Still not muttering a word, he accessed his surroundings.  When he finally finished, he let out one low grunt, and I then followed him to a smaller set of steps leading to a pillared entryway.  Once we were inside the house, I again stayed in the living room while he roamed around.  Not knowing what to expect, I minded my own business and looked around some.

Just like his Key West home, this one was very airy with tall ceilings and lots of windows.  Beneath the windows on one wall, a long bookcase full of Ernest’s favorite reads stretched almost the entire length of the room.  I touched some old book covers; then I pulled two out.  They were The Brothers Karamozov and James Joyce’s short story collection Dubliners.  Both looked like they had been individually cleaned.  Several trophy animal heads adorned the uncluttered walls along with a few pictures.  The period furniture was sparsely arranged, and a well-stocked bar took up most of one side wall. 

Even though the old place lacked air-conditioning, it was cool in the spacious room as I walked around with the knowing grin of an inside trader.  When the welcome smell of hot Cuban food drifted in from another room, that grin stretched into a smile.  Nodding my head I muttered, “
Mmm
hmm, dinner’s on.” 

Suddenly appearing in the room like a, well . . . like a ghost, Ernest said, “Everything looks to be in shipshape, Amigo.  What do you say I mix us both one before we sit down to eat?”

“Why not?”
I said, parking myself in an upholstered chair by the bar.

“What’s your preference?”

“Doesn’t matter, whatever you recommend.”

In a flash Ernest handed me a stemmed glass.  It was a Daiquiri, complete with lime juice and sugar.  He sat in the chair next to me, and I asked him, “What’s the most important thing you can tell me about writing?  I’ve been meaning to ask you . . . just in case.”

Stirring his drink while he spoke he said, “You have to write about what you know.  That’s
the
most important advice I can give you.  If you don’t know what or where you’re writing about, they’ll spot it in no time.  You’ll come across as a fake.”

“Must you have been to a place or experienced an event before you can write about it?”

“It’s always better if you have, but it’s not absolutely necessary if you . . . .”

Right then Ernest was interrupted.  There was a knock at the door, and the loud rapping sound echoed throughout the spacious room,

“Who in the hell could that be?” Ernest said. 

Resting his drink on a table between us, he got up and lumbered toward the glass paned door.  As he approached it he said, “I don’t see anybody out there.”  But then he swung it open, and the moment he did, an entire crowd of what sounded like fifty excited voices shouted in unison, “HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY ERNEST!”

Chapter 1
0

As I rose from the chair, my eyes bulged, and my mouth slung open.  I simply could not believe what I was witnessing.  One by one, dozens of people from Ernest’s long-gone past filed through that doorway. 

The first to come were his wives.  In the order he had married them—Hadley, Pauline, Martha, and Mary—all gave the birthday boy a hug and a kiss.  His last wife, Mary Welsh-Hemingway, held him the longest.  Once all four of them moved to the bar in a cluster, the next person stepped inside.  It was Gary Cooper.  Tall and rangy with boyish good looks, his smile brightened the room even more.  Then in came Marlene Dietrich—the famous German-American actress of their time.  I heard Ernest affectionately call her “my little Kraut” as they embraced.  After her grand entrance, two matadors in bullfighting outfits followed.  Behind them were Charles and
Lorine
Thompson—two of Ernest and Pauline’s closest Key West friends.

All of Ernest’s closest pals, known as his Key West “mob,” came in together.  They were a jovial bunch, and though they were bunched together inside the doorway, I think it was Sloppy Joe’s voice that shouted, “Let the games begin!”  I may be uncertain about that, but I’m positive that, with a wide grin and a raised fist,
Hem
said to Josie, “I really should cool you for not telling me about all this.”

Max Perkins, Hem’s editor at Scribner’s, showed up as did F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda.  Gertrude Stein, Ernest’s mentor from his Paris years, walked in with Alice B. Toklas.  Their arms were locked together and both sported uncharacteristically wide smiles on their faces.  It was as if, after many years, Stein and Toklas had finally broken out of a locked closet.  Later on Gertrude would ask me how I got the nasty “
Ernestesque
” gash on my forehead. 

When Big Skinner, the bartender from Joe’s bar came in, the doorway suddenly seemed to shrink.  He was a towering, imposing figure even if he weren’t the three hundred pounds he’d been during his prime.  I stood there in awe, wondering how anybody, no matter how drunk, would not be intimidated by this man.  I also wondered why Big Skinner ever bothered to keep a baseball bat hidden beneath his bar.  Later, when I shook his enormous hand, I felt like a cub scout shaking with his new scout leader.  

A band cranked up outside on the patio as other guests streamed into the crowded room.  The musicians opened with
Happy Days are Here Again
, and I felt a nostalgic smile rise on my face.  I thought how perfectly fitting the 1930’s hit song was for such an occasion.